Copyright and You
October 19, 2011This article only covers the US copyright law and should not be used as a replacement for a lawyer.
What’s Copyright?
A copyright is the process in place to prevent “stealing” of work.
What does Copyright cover?
Copyrights can only cover tangible things, such as music, a video, an article, but not and idea. Nor can they cover a mere “list” of things, such as a the ingredients to a recipe, but if the recipe is more substantial and includes directions, then it can be copyrighted.
Copyright covers: derivatives produced of your work, distribution, display, and reproduction.
When does copyright begin?
Copyright takes effect at the very beginning – when you develop the material. You do not have to have the Copyright notice up for a copyright to be in place.
How do I place a copyright?
A copyright statement is pretty strict and must follow a certain format. A statement such as “Everything on this website is MINE!” is not a proper copyright statement and holds no legal water. Instead, you need to place a statement like this somewhere on your website, it does not need to be very large:
Copyright © 2011 John Smith
The copyright symbol can be created in HTML with:
The word ‘Copyright’ is optional, but the copyright symbol is not. The year should list all years that you wish your work to be copyrighted. The year obviously can’t start before the work was created and cannot extend past the current year. There are a few deviations that can be made to this format, however, this is the most standard one.
Where to put the copyright notice?
The best place to put it is on the top-level of the website, for example, the home page. You don’t need to put it on every page, though you can if you like.
Someone stole my stuff!
There are a few ways to go about this. The first way is to kindly contact the person and request they take the work down (I strongly recommend also including a deadline). The second is to go to their webhost and complain, giving concrete evidence of the items in question and the person’s refusal to take it down. Most webhosts take copyright infringement very seriously. The third option is to find a lawyer.
What about contractors?
This becomes very tricky. Ownership of the work should be outlined in the contract that you signed. If it’s not, then it is safe to assume that the contractor is the creator of the work and retains rights to it.
